Rick Green [00:00:07] You found your way to the intersection of faith and culture. Thanks for joining us today on the WallBuilders.com. I normally would say it's good news Friday. I felt like it's Good News 2025. Like it's just ongoing, just continues. Doesn't matter if it's Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever. We've been sharing good news pretty much every day of the week, but this is rapid fire, good news on Fridays. So we're going to jump into that. Be sure to visit our websites today, wallbuilders.show for any of the radio programs you might've missed over the last few weeks, and also an easy way to share with your friends and family. That's wallbuilder.show. And then wallbuilders.com, that's our main website. Great place to get some materials, get some classes, get some updates on what's going on. And also want to encourage you to let your friends and family know about some of the programs that we're doing. So we've got our pastor's briefing coming up in September. We've got a teacher's training this summer. We got the summer Institute with the kiddos. Uh, well, I say kiddos actually, Tim, what is it 18 to 25? I can't remember the age range. I'm showing my age when I say that a 20 year old is a kiddo. 

Tim Barton [00:00:58] Yeah. Well, you know, the older we get, the younger, uh, 20 is. So we have 18 to 25 year olds. It's a week long program. We need two of them. One in June, one in July. And then we have family seminar coming up. And of course, Rick, what you guys are doing with leadership Congress, Patriot Academy, so many opportunities, through both of our outlets and programs, lots of great training for all ages. There is something there for everybody. 

Rick Green [00:01:26] No reason for anybody to have a boring summer. In other words, there's lots to do. So folks go, go wallbuilders.com today. And now on the teacher program, Tim, is that teachers of certain types of, is that only civics teachers? Is that, you know, teachers that in public school, private school, what's the range when you train these teachers? Right, right. 

David Barton [00:01:42] Rick, Rick, where have you been, man? You are showing you're a civics teacher. When's the last time we had a civix teacher? Civics in government is out the door, brother. If it exists, it's gonna be a private school. 

Rick Green [00:01:56] It's likebell bottoms and mullets. We're going to bring all the cool stuff back, including civics. 

Tim Barton [00:02:01] There actually are some states that still require civics, but it's certainly not something that is universal in nation, unfortunately. But yes, Rick, it's open to all teachers are welcome to apply. We do have a balance of we try to respond pretty quickly. It's not quite first come, first serve. There is a little bit of a weighted scale. So if you are a government teacher, if you're a history teacher, if you are a high school teacher, you might get a little weight in preference over... uh, some other individuals and that's not because we don't care about everybody, but people that are actually going to be utilizing this a lot, we encourage that. But, we've actually had some different professors that have come. We've had some leaders of different kind of,  classical education or Christian schools or kind of across the board. And this is something that we'd encourage anybody that's involved in education. to apply, sign up if there's spots available. We love to have you come. And I'm saying if there are spots available, because I don't know how many are available. There's two sessions, and usually one fills up faster than the other, but both of those you can find out on our website, wallbuilders.com under initiatives. You can look for the teachers training program this summer. It's gonna be over at the American Journey Experience, which is one of the very large museums that we have helped do here in Texas. It's, it's, uh, our friend Glenn Beck. It's a collaboration we have with him. And so when teachers come, they get to actually have a chance to see some of the artifacts, hold things in their hands and say from Glenn's collection, from our collection, from the American journey experience from, from that museum's collection as well. So really incredible opportunity for all teachers to be able to come and experience history for themselves. My dad and I will primarily give some of the lectures and talks, but whatever. whatever we talk about, as soon as we are done with that presentation, we will then pull out all the artifacts related and pertinent to that category we talked about so that people can see for themselves what's there. It's a great opportunity for teachers, not just have hands-on, but even maybe do some videos, have some things they can utilize in their classroom. So again, encourage everybody involved in education, all teachers, check out the WallBuilders website and look for that teacher's training program this summer. 

Rick Green [00:04:16] Looks like the dates are, let's see, July 7th is the first one. And then July 10th is, is the second one. So both of them, you know, right there in the middle of July. What a perfect time to do it. Right folks, you're going to do independence day and, and celebrate the nation will be one year away from the two 50th. So July 4th with the family church, whoever, and then head into Dallas and go to one of those two dates for the teachers conference. And I don't know how y'all do this, but it's only a hundred bucks. I mean, this thing is like super, super inexpensive. I know you raise money and a lot of donors helped to make this happen. So teachers out there take advantage of this. There is no comparison to getting to hold those documents. And I was just looking for the navigation on the website and what you want to do, go to wallbuilders.com and then in the top right corner, I don't know where my kids got this, but they call the little squiggly lines a hamburger. It looks nothing like a hamburger, why do they call it that? Anyway, the little squiggly lines, it's a maroon box with three little squigly lines, click on that and then you'll see the teacher's conference that Tim's talking about underneath the initiative. So great, great program again, all of those different things happening. this summer, plenty to get engaged in. And I'm sorry for taking up so much time. That could have been good news. And we probably missed two good news stories because I'm rambling on. 

Tim Barton [00:05:21] Well, Rick, it's probably worth pointing out something we have at the Teachers Conference now, especially given that there's gonna be some new opportunities in education, because the first piece of good news, elephant in the room, is President Trump signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education. 

Rick Green [00:05:40] I wish I had a button that would like blow the trumpet in Zion, you know, I mean, that's like this is we should be heralding this This is we've been wanting this to happen for 45 years and here we are 

Tim Barton [00:05:52] actually happening? Well, and Rick, we have talked a lot about President Trump's legacy and what that's going to look like and how President Trump has done things that have been far more conservative than than other leaders that we thought maybe were really good conservatives. You know, this is something that obviously Ronald Reagan, when he took over as president, this was a the Department of Education was a brand new creation. And he was navigating what to do with it. And of course, the initial statement from Reagan was he was gonna close this thing down. We don't need it there anymore. And as great as Reagan was when we look back, as many positive things as he did, it's just staggering and astounding to me how President Trump has continued to exceed in so many ways on conservative policies, on constitutional positions that earlier presidents have not done. And then this certainly in my mind, is in that category. 

Rick Green [00:06:51] Well, David, you've worked with multiple presidents in education and doing these different things, you know, the fact that we're actually here and you were at the White House this week, and I'm sure there was a lot of talk about this happening today, but I mean, this is something that you've talked about for literally decades and the, just from a jurisdictional perspective that the feds should not be involved in education in the first place. So man, all these years of educating people and getting them to understand this and now it's happening. 

David Barton [00:07:17] Well, one of the things that's worth pointing out too, is how much courage it took to do this, because if you go back to, we're talking Ronald Reagan and the department of education, 1979, the department education is created under Jimmy Carter and when it's created, it passes by a one vote margin. So it almost did not come into existence. It passed by one vote vote margin, Reagan wanted to get rid of it. So they brought it back up for a vote under Reagan. And when they did... It failed by four votes to wipe it out. Now, how could you go from missing winning by one delusion by four? And it's because several of the Republican senators said, man, if we vote against the department of education, people call us anti-education and we're not, and that is, that is why it largely has continued to exist for all those years is people don't want to see, be seen voting against education. Cause that is where so much money goes. That's what I mean, if you want to get a community really ticked off, start messing with their schools and Then the teachers come out and the parents come out. And so that's why it never got done under Reagan. And they wanted it. And I think one of the things that might've helped is if he'd put somebody really incompetent in that position as Secretary of Education, but he didn't, he put somebody really good, Bill Bennett. And Bill Bennett actually took that thing and made it work really, really well. Not in the sense of good education, but in the since of helping people understand what education is supposed to do. And I think that kind of sealed the fate of it. After that, nobody wanted to get rid of it, but it came, Reagan tried and he missed it because four Republican senators would not follow through on the vote they had under Jimmy Carter. 

Rick Green [00:08:56] David, I got a zero in on what you just said. So one vote. I mean, think about this was a Democrat Congress, huge majorities, both in the Senate and the House. I was just pulling up the makeup in 1979 when this thing passed 58 Democrats in the senate, 42 Republicans. Then over to the House, check this out, 275. So they had 275 Democrats to 141 Republicans. So the fact that it was close means it was closed among Democrats too. They understood this was probably not a good idea. You had even Democrats not supporting this thing. 

David Barton [00:09:28] Well, you go back to even under the view, this is what's called a trifecta. A trifectas is when the president and the house and the senator are all of the same party. And so when you look at the trifectar, Nixon did not have a trifacta at all, never had a time when he had house, Senate, and president the same, nor did Gerald Ford. As you move forward into Ronald Reagan, Reagan had eight years without a Republican house or Senate to help him. He had a Democrat House of Senate, as you point out, they were large majorities and you go forward. It's not until George W. Bush and he gets two years in the first term, two years to the second term. And now Trump got two years from the first time he's getting at least two years this term. We'll see if he gets more than that. But when you look at, at the last 104 years, Republicans have only had a trifecta where that the president House of the Senate were of their party in 18 years out of 104 years. That's not much that what we have now with Trump is an opportunity that does not come very often. It is very rare. And I mean, Trump is just stepping through and he's, you know, everybody knows if you mess with the department of education, you're going to be anti-education and look at Trump as all right, this needs to go away. He ran on that. He campaigned on that they called him anti- education. It didn't affect things and he followed through. It's it's quite remarkable courage. 

Tim Barton [00:10:50] Well, I also think it's because we are now in an era where you don't have the mainstream media controlling all of the narrative, because you can look on X or look on some different social media platforms and there are so many voices and leading conservative voices who have been highlighting a lot of the problems with the Department of Education, including just identifying their own stats. When you look at the Department Education and what they identify is their product when it comes to them directing education in America, which of course, they're not supposed to be directing education, but that's what they're doing. And the fact that we have lower academic scores, we have a lower standing, whatever kind of measurement you want to put to it, we are doing largely far worse now than we were when the Department of Education came around in 1979. But that, as you mentioned, because it was something that was done by Congress, it's something that there needs to be legislative act and to officially abolish, remove this and After Trump signed the executive order yesterday, Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana already has announced that he's going to submit legislation to accomplish the president's goal. So President Trump took the first step that was needed in dismantling the Department of Education. And now through legislative action, hopefully in the near future, we will be able to rejoice even more on a Good News Friday that the Department Education has been removed. And just to keep everybody on track with this, Part of why this really does matter from a constitutional standpoint. This could be a foundation of freedom Thursday question and dialog. When you look at the constitution in an article one, section eight, it lists the powers that Congress has, the powers of the government has. And what we know is the enumerated powers outlined in the constitution saying this is what the federal government can do nowhere in the constitution does it list or mention education, the 10th amendment. The constitution says that whatever's not explicitly given to the federal government through the constitution. belongs to the state. Well, education wasn't given to the federal government through the constitution. Therefore, according to the 10th amendment of the constitution, it belongs to this state. And so this is something that is the Department of Education was unconstitutional from the beginning. The idea that the federal is going to control education. And really, if you go back and look at the Department Education, kind of their founding documents, what was written down as the objectives of part of education. It was never to become what they have become now. What they are now is blatantly unconstitutional. But even early on, the very role and nature of having a federal agency reviewing and controlling education in the states is very contrary to the Constitution. This is something that belongs in the state according to the constitution. And so President Trump, and now potentially Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, are working to Restore the constitutional order of education back to the states. And this is such good news. 

Rick Green [00:13:47] All right. Well, that piece of good news, we could spend weeks and weeks and weeks on that one, and there'll be more to talk about as President Trump phases this in instead of just wiping it out completely and probably has the right person at the helm. You know, if she can handle all those big world wrestling folks, she can the cage match that is coming with trying to get rid of the Department of Education. But let's shift gears, David. 

David Barton [00:14:08] What's your first piece of good news? So we've talked this week about how that so much of what Trump is doing. There have been federal judges step in and say, you can't do that. I think there were 70 lawsuits or something, but a lot of that we talked about was form shopping. And that as this stuff goes up, it's more likely to get overturned by higher courts. And here's a great example. We've already covered good news, how that Trump, he just cut so many of the DEI programs, all the tens of millions that were being spent on DEI programs. And a federal judge stepped in and said, hey, you can't cut DEI programs. And just a quote from that federal judge. This federal judge, this is what he said, and DEI, of course, requires discrimination. You don't hire someone on merit, you hire someone who they are, whether it's their race or their gender, whatever. And federal law prohibits discriminating on the basis of race, gender, or whatever. So now we're discriminating against certain races and genders in favor of others, and that's DEI. And so the federal judge who struck down Trump's dismissing these programs said, quote, people of good faith who work to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion deserve praise, not punishment. So the federal judges took a clear position on the content, not on the law of it, but he said, I think it's really good that we promote diversity equity and inclusion. So this worked its way up to the fourth federal circuit of appeals. and they overturned that judge's orders. And they rightfully, great comments out of this, on the Fourth Circuit, they said that the judge's personal views on DEI programs, quote, should play absolutely no part in deciding this case. Any individual judge's views on whether certain executive action is good policy is not only irrelevant to fulfilling our duty to adjudicate cases and controversies according to the law, it's an impermissible consideration. So the higher courts have told this judge, you are totally out of bounds by having an opinion on whether the program itself was right or wrong. And then the fourth circuit also overturned the judge's decision because they said, it's not going to, the position you've taken as a judge is not going to be upheld as it's appealed up the chain because there's too much evidence, there's to much constitution. You can't show the DEI canceling that violates the constitution. You didn't even give a constitutional clause. You just said you thought it shouldn't be done. And so this is what we were talking about throughout this week. And this is part of the good news is these courts of appeals are not only starting to overturn some of this stuff, they're slapping down these lower court judges that were doing were form shopping was occurring and they were choosing these lower judges because they knew they held an opinion. And so it's good news that like the, the fourth circuit, which is not considered a particularly conservative circuit. They slapped that judge down and said your personal opinions have no bearing on deciding this has got to be on the law and the constitution and that's really good news

Rick Green [00:17:06] Very good news. Quick break everybody we've got a lot more good news coming your way stay with us you're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:18:17] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show diving right back into good news and Tim Barton's up next. 

Tim Barton [00:18:21] Well, guys, this one is going back to the State of the Union address. When, when CBS did the exit polling, we talked about it for a little bit. How it was like 76, I think we said at the time, maybe 75 could have been 76% of people approved. I have the polling in front of me and then actually there's some really interesting breakdowns in it of people's view of President Trump's speech and 76% Of viewers approved, only 23% disapproved. When they gave the breakdown asking, did Trump spend time on issues you care about, 63% said a lot, 28% said little, and only 9% said none at all. When it came to the people that were actually interviewed and were watching, 51% of these respondents were Republican, 27% were Independent, and 20% were Democrats. So just roughly half of these interviewees were Republican and yet when they were asked, how does a speech make you feel? 68% said hopeful, which means not only would you assume then that's probably nearly every Republican, but that's nearly every independent in the speech. They asked if Trump was presidential, 74% said yes. Was he entertaining? 74% percent said yes, was he inspiring? 71% said, yes. When they asked, does Trump have a clear plan for inflation? 68%, said yes only 32% said no. When they were asked... Do you like Trump's plans to address waste in government spending? 77% said yes, which that would have to be, there's 51% that are Republican, 27% that were independent. So that's virtually every single Republican independent with the thought that he probably didn't pick up a lot of Democrats, but let's say there could have been a couple of percentage of Democrats that were there. Do you approve of President Trump's plan for immigration in the border? 77% said yes of his. ideas to resolve Ukraine and Russia situation. 73% said yes, his position on tariffs, 65% said, yes. When they were asked, did Trump describe crime, the crime problem as it is, 68% said yeah, about as it, and only 22 said that it was, he was describing it worse or worse than it is. 10% said not as bad as it but 68% agreed. When it came to having a congressman removed from the chamber, 76% approved of that happening and again, the big picture, we knew overall that people approved of President Trump's speech overall, but when you start getting the breakdown and realize that they are not just approving of his speech overall. They were approving of things like his positions on some basic issues that we're navigating in culture, whether it be things like inflation or waste and spending, immigration on the border, Ukraine and Russia, and all of that matters because. This is not just Republicans supporting that position. This then has to mean that independents and potentially even some Democrats are supportive of what he's doing. And so as we are seeing that, as you mentioned, these judges that are taking these really aggressive positions against president Trump, I saw a stat earlier this week where in the last hundred years, two thirds of every judicial action taken against a president two thirds of those over the last hundred years have been in President Trump in this couple months he's been in office, which is an astounding thing to think about that over the last hundred years, I think there was like 24, 25 actions against other presidents. And in President Trump's first couple of months, there's been like 46 actions against him. Again, like two thirds of all action by, by judges against the president have been, in the last couple of months. And again, why that matters is because these judges are taking positions that are directly opposed to the position of the American people. And we've talked about when, when Democrats couldn't meet president Trump at the ballot box, they're resorting to other strategies. And part of it is using judges to try to slow down what he's doing. But the good news is that the American people are not supportive of what these judges are doing. Number one, and number two, they are far more supportive of president Trump and his policies. and just seeing the breakdown, and this is from CBS. I can only imagine how much it probably grieved them when they released this data, this survey, this poll from the State of the Union address and what all these people said, because this is certainly not what they would tend to think or agree with. It's certainly not with guys like Lester Holt or other guys on their network seem to promote, and yet this is where the American people are, and that is really encouraging to see how many Americans are very supportive of what to us would be some pretty common sense ideas. 

Rick Green [00:23:15] Yeah, it means that, you know, with that kind of support, it's going to make him even more willing to fight these district judges and some of these others that are trying to derail the agenda because the American people are with him. They've got his back on this for sure. David, you closing us out with the last 

David Barton [00:23:29] piece of good news today? Well I'm going back to another federal judge and the decision this relates to what we were talking about earlier. You recall that that Trump went through and fired all those probationary employees or so many of them. He just he downsized quickly. He said probationary folks you're not coming on we don't need more we need less and so there's a suit brought against him for firing these employees and downsizing. Now you can you maybe can guess who the suit was brought by, but it was by the unions. And so what is your constitutional grounds for telling Trump he can't fire probationary employees and telling Trump, he can downsize the size of the federal government, grab this; in the court the union says, well, we're suing because this would downsize federal agencies and that would do us as unions, irreparable harm because of our resulting loss in union dues and bargaining power. So the basis for not firing is... You're gonna cost us money and we won't have as much power as we're used to having. And so that's why you have to stop Trump. I look at it as on what possible constitutional basis. So as this goes on and they're in the court and they are talking about it, one of the things they said is, what's happening is there's gonna be so many less people to work in the federal government. And the federal judge says, yes, that's true. He says, but you can't show me in the constitution where that's a problem. And it's like, isn't it nice to have a judge that goes back to the constitution instead of saying, well, yeah, you know, we, we can't hurt this group or that group. So that's clearly not a DEI judge if he's going to the constitution, but this is just another one of those, those cases. And, and just to pile on with even one more as we close out. There's an inspector general over each of the cabinet level departments. And Trump fired all of them, got rid of all of these guys and said, you're out of a job because they have done such a poor job in overseeing those agencies under Trump and they just, they weren't doing it. And again, a judge says, well, I'm not going to stop him from firing people. I mean, that's not unconstitutional. That's not un constitutional for the executive to run the executive branch, you know, novel idea. That's what the second article of the Constitution is about, is the president and the executive branch. And so, you know, we were talking about the fact that it's going to turn back in the right direction. And these judges, as this works its way up, we're going to start doing better on it. And there's three examples that we covered today, just of this starting to happen. 

Rick Green [00:26:12] All right, guys, we're out of time for good news today. We'll have more next week. Be sure and visit the websites again that we talked about at the top of the show, wallbuilders.show and wallbuilder.com. Great resources at both websites and then share this one, the one we did today that there's a lot of people that don't know about some of these good news stories. They certainly don't some of this background on, on the constitutional, authority of the president and some of the things we talked about yesterday on, On Foundations of Freedom Thursday. So share that one as well. Have a great weekend. We'll be back with you on Monday. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.